As a reminder, Signal is still awesome, is run by cool people who have been doing good stuff for your privacy for many many years, runs on your phone and your laptop and your dad's PC and your buddy's phone of that other brand ...
this post was submitted on 07 Nov 2023
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Main issue for me is that no one, I know uses any other app than WhatsApp.
I use telegram for piracy but wish people would move over to Telegram or Signal. Majority seems to be stubborn on WhatsApp because of easiness and laziness.
Telegram is less private then whatsapp, unless you use the private chats it's not even encrypted.
While I still use and sort of like Signal, I feel that dropping SMS support was the wrong choice and I don't like the direction they are going. They are also against federation which I also don't like. I've stopped recommending Signal to people.
I believe them when they say that one reason to drop SMS was that some vulnerable users were mistakenly sending SMS when they thought they were safe by using Signal. That's a serious problem where a person having Signal on their phone could cause them to expose themselves to attacks. That person's life is more important than my momentary inconvenience when my mom is using SMS and my friend is using Signal.
I really wish that there were better options; some sort of incrementally-built web-of-trust like the old PGP model. But right now, Signal is still in a sweet spot for me: yes, it's centralized, but it gets certain specific benefits of centralization while also credibly assuring that the server owners can't do evil with it even if they want to ... and they credibly don't. I can get my family and my housemates to use it, instead of something from Zuckerberg.
Those are definitely all valid points, though I feel a bit of UI work making it abundantly clear that it's not encrypted in case of SMS and an option perhaps to fully disable SMS in settings if you really don't want it would have helped further adoption. I feel like they are optimizing for a rather small subset of users and thereby hurting the rest.
I think it's a good idea from a security standpoint to have a UX space in which everyone can be confident that everyone's stuff is encrypted; with a very distinct and (yes) inconvenient barrier — in this case, a different app — between encrypted and unencrypted spaces.
Everyone is using lots of different messaging systems: SMS/MMS; specific systems like Signal, Telegram, or WhatsApp; email; maybe Facebook Messenger; etc. It's really important for some users' actual lives that it be totally clear when you're crossing from a secure space to an insecure space. Having the insecure space not be in the same app is one way to accomplish that.
When we need to move data between the secure space and the insecure space, we can do that through copy-and-paste, or even screenshots. It is inconvenient, but that's because it's explicit and intentional, which also means you can't move data from one to the other by accident. That's good.
As a privacy hobbyist, I want to notice what works for the people whose lives depend on privacy: the journalists, activists, sex workers, LSD dealers, etc. I don't have their risks, but I want to contribute to a world where they can be safe.
However, there are definitely lots of different needs and comfort levels. What's a sweet spot for me might be an uncanny valley for you.
You didn't have to enable SMS in Signal if you didn't want to.
It's a user-level decision, and again, it was very clear in Signal when it was going SMS already.
It certainly killed adoption. It was the only app I had any success converting people, because it was seamless.
That's a pretty poor excuse, since Signal made it very clear when a message was going SMS.
If they felt it wasn't obvious enough, make it more obvious.
I can't find any reason to remove SMS support, other than something they're not telling us.
I read some BS about it costing Signal more to support... It couldn't be much, because SMS is handled by the OS, Signal just hands it off via standardized API.
I think all personal messages ahould be encrypted! This should be a standard, not optional.
Yes, but my mom has an old phone and can't install stuff.
I have signal, could I have a separate signal associated with my work account on the same phone do you know?
You can use Molly (a Signal fork) and have 2 accounts on same device, you need a second phone number though
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Oh boy, what can't we put ads in?
Can we get MtDew Green Lights with Coca-Cola Red lights?
The spacebar on laptops is free game, just asking for it.
It really is a shame that I can still buy bedsheets that aren't branded with a corporate advertising campaign.
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Time has shown that people would rather watch ads than pay money for digital goods and services.
Because the pricing is fucking ridiculous for the ad free version of things. And even then, ad-free usually means ad-free for a limited time until the profit line starts to slow down.
If you make full use of a YouTube Premium family plan, each person pays around $4/month.
Is that a ridiculous price?
me and my friends pay like 1usd/month premium family plan just to avoid the fkng ads
Do you think you're paying a ridiculous price?
Booo! Boo this man!
I paid for Whatsapp many years ago. I wonder if they can just do that retroactively.
Sure they can
You paid??? What is this, a WinRAR equivalent flex? I just reinstalled or something like that can't remember.
The app market was different back then. No real alternatives, not meta owned, I think I paid 1€. Nowadays I wouldn't pay for any app other than a good Lemmy reader, I also use my phone for not much else anymore.
Yeah but like I had WhatsApp back then and I simply reinstalled or something like that.
Like it was like WinRAR more a suggestion than a strong requirement, there were ways to bypass it, start the 1 free year again or whatever it was called back then.
There wasn't a strong enforcement or validation.
WhatsApp original business plan was 'use the app fro free for a year and than pay $1 per year'. I wouldn't mind paying $1 per year for for an app without adds and respecting my privacy.
I think I paid 79p for WhatsApp back on the iPhone 3G or something.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
In September, Cathcart categorically denied a report from Financial Times saying that the Meta-owned chat app plans to show ads.
“The reason I qualified [sic] the answer is that there could be ads in other places — channels or status.
WhatsApp had talked about putting ads in Status a few years ago, but the company never rolled it out.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch it’s not currently testing Status ads in any country.
Meta hasn’t provided any details about when or if it plans to launch ads in either product, Status or Channels.
Until now, WhatsApp, which is used by more than 2 billion people across the world, has relied on its business messaging and click-to-WhatsApp ads on other platforms like Facebook for revenue.
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